Monday, February 16, 2009

Ericsson achieved a peak downlink rate of 42 Mbps in a public demonstration of HSPA Evolution technology. The demonstration, which was conducted near Stockholm, was attended by Telstra and other mobile operators.

It was the first time in the world such speeds was achieved on commercially-available products. Until now, consumers have seen network speeds of 28Mbps at best.

HSPA Evolution is a new dual carrier technology that can be implemented with a software upgrade and doubles the speed for users everywhere in the cell of the mobile network, even for users at the edge of the cell, where performance is generally lower. This will also increase the capacity and operators can deliver more gigabytes per base station, hence reducing the cost of delivering mobile broadband to consumers.

Ericsson said its commercially-available hardware and software were used with the first commercial chipset for 42Mbps dual carrier technology. The average consumer download speed achieved in the demo was a 41.5Mbps. 42Mbps is the peak network downlink speed. Actual customer download speeds are less and can vary due to congestion, distance from the base station, local conditions, hardware, software and other factors.

Ulf Ewaldsson, Vice President and Head of Product Area Radio at Ericsson says: "Our studies show that consumers are thirsty for higher speed and choose operators that can offer the best performance for an attractive price. Our HSPA technology for 42Mbps is now available for deployment."http://www.ericsson.com